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Archives for December 2015

Donald Trump for President…

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For months now, pundits have been trying to explain Donald Trump.

“He’s not serious,” we heard in the early days of the campaign.

“He’s a Clinton plant,” some right-wing insiders have declared.

Following his “ban Muslims from entering the U.S.” statement, some have claimed Trump is trying to stir up feelings of oppression among one fifth of the world’s population in order to catalyze world-wide Islamic jihad.

The Truth is out there…and Jeb!™ knows the truth. During last night’s G.O.P. debate, he made a startling revelation:

So Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners, but he’s a KAOS candidate, and he’d be a KAOS President.

That explains it! It all makes sense now: totally serious, not a Clinton plant, not a jihad-enabler.

Image of Trump as President of KAOS

President of KAOS

Trump is running for President of KAOS. It all makes sense now.

Donald Trump for President…of KAOS!

Mr. Trump would totally be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency of KAOS.

G.O.P. Debate Open Thread

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The debate should start at 5:30. I’ll be at Drinking Liberally and live-blogging the event (internet bandwidth permitting).

To get this thread started, here is an interesting video that was released today:

Does this provide any insights about one particular G.O.P. candidate’s (1) truthfulness, (2) great memory, (3) campaign substance?

5:10: The kiddie debate is over. Caught the closing statements. Sen. Man-on-dog wins just because he had such an upbeat way of talking about death.

5:25: What the fuck, CNN? “Trump arrives at debate” isn’t fucking news.

5:33: Someone named “Rinse Prius” or something is giving some bullshit talk. He sounds like a used car salesman.

5:36: Is Donald Trump holding up the show? Holy fuck…start without him!

5:43: Rand Paul has morphed into Ron Paul: Unelectable oddball.

5:44: Red ties are in.

5:46: Again?!? Seriously? The national anthem? This debate better involve some sort of physical test of skill!

5:48: Did Paul just say the Constitution is wrong?

5:52: Hey, Chris Christie, those LA father’s are probably thankful they aren’t crossing a bridge in NJ!

5:55: Jeb Bush: “I’ll keep our country safe, secure, and free”…just like my Brother did.

5:58: Carson pauses for a moment of silence. Don’t be fooled…he just REALLY needed to close his eyes.

6:02: Jeb: “Trump would be a Kaos president.” Get Smart!

6:05: Cruz is a one issue candidate tonight: “Obama won’t say ‘radical Islamic Terrorism’, so vote for me.

6:08: Is Christie wearing a “junk” pin on his lapel?

6:20: Christie needs to make an executive decision to straighten his tie.

6:22: Carson bails on a question…and looks really bad doing it. Wow.

6:26: Fiorina throws around “CEO” as if Americans have a positive association with the term.

6:36: Aaaaaaahhhh…a Muslimey looking questioner! Everyone duck under your podiums!!! (podia?)

6:39: Actually, Donald, Bush seems a little more energetic than you do this evening….

7:08: This debate has become exceptionally empty and repetitive.

7:11: “Punch Russia in ‘The Nose'” Nikolai Gogol smiled.

7:12: Earth to Fiorina: The withdrawal from Iraq was Bush’s doing.

7:19: Trump hurt himself with his juvenile “tough guy” insults to Jeb and then talking poll numbers. He should save that crap for campaign events.

7:32: Donald Trump. A totally low energy debater. Low ENERGY. Am I right?

7:37: Kasich says stuff that doesn’t sound extreme. But doesn’t really say anything at all.

7:45: As President, Dr. Carson could do brain surgery on “unstable” Kim Jong Un

7:45: Carson memorized a bunch of military stuff!

7:47: Ummm…Jeb Bush used a private email server while Gubernator of FL.

7:55: At this point Carson seems almost incapable of speaking…

8:03: Jeb bush stumbles his way through his closing comments. He was doing okish until then.

8:04: Rubio: “Now millions of Americans feel left behind”…like most Muslim Americans?

8:05: Carson’s “exceptionalism” closing statement makes him sound like he munched on lead paint chips as a lad.

Wrap-up. Another retched debate. My complaints is that WAAAAYYYYYY too much time was spent on security and terrorism. Fact is…foreign terrorism is a pretty minor threat in the U.S. Domestic terrorism is a much bigger threat, but no real discussion of that. That’s because IT DOESN’T SCARE VOTERS enough. I missed a chunk of the debate, but I didn’t hear anything about climate change, the environment, air polution, the economy, health care, domestic infrastructure, gun safety, white collar & Wall Street crime, higher education, primary education, mass transit & reducing traffic congestion, tax relief for the poor, reducing income inequality, energy independence, credit card fraud, etc., etc. These are issues that affect Americans every single day. And there was nothing.

These guys are in a political campaign bubble, and completely out of touch with the real America. But they got that fear thing going….

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottle

It’s always fun when debates happen to fall on a Tuesday. And it’s happened once again—CNN will host a G.O.P. debate tonight. So please join us this evening for a special debate watching edition of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Our normal starting time is 8:00pm, but this week we will start at 5:30pm for the debate.

Note: We’ll have sound and video for the debate. But the pub has other customers, so the sound may not be as loud as you want, especially with the background noises of a busy tavern and peripheral conversations. If you are intent on hearing every word, I recommend you bring stuff to stream the audio. The pub has free wifi.




Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities, Vancouver, WA, and Shelton chapters also meet. The Lakewood meets on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets. And next Monday, the Aberdeen and Yakima chapters meet.

There are 186 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, three in Oregon and one in Idaho. Find—or start—a chapter near you.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Judge not lest ye be judged: the quiz game.

City Hall Drama: Nick Licata battles Kshama Sawant aid Clay Showalter.

Jimmy Dore: Erick Erickson trashes his own mom to defend his racist lie Part I and Part II.

The Koch Brother’s Climate change deniers’ anthem.

Lee Camp: The truth about being a drone pilot.

Mental Floss: 25 facts about the science of music.

Islamophobia: Woman yells at and hits Muslim praying in California park.

The 2016 Clown Convention:

Stephen helps the cause of free speech in Turkey.

Harry Reid blasts Justice Scalia’s racist remark.

KPLU: A preview of the Inslee–Bryant gubernatorial race.

Jimmy Dore: What could Obama possibly say to appease the Republicans?

VSauce: Supertasks.

For the First Responders:

White House: West Wing Week.

Jimmy Dore: Jokes of the Week.

Pap and Farron Cousins: Congress critters own stock in the pharma companies that they (de)regulate.

David Pakman: Could a guaranteed basic income work?

Sam Seder: GOP terrifies people then argues policy should be formed around ‘feelings’.

How I feel right now as a Muslim in America.

The Week in Gunz:

Rent-An-Endorsement : hooks politicians up with celebrities!.

Congressional Hits and Misses of the week.

Jimmy Dore: Dick Cheney predicted the quagmire he later created.

Jay Pharoah and Michelle Obama: Go To College Music Video.

Sens. Al Franken and John McCain do some trash talkin’:

Mental Floss: Does cracking your knuckles cause arthritis?

Friday hot takes.

Seth Meyers does Hillary:

Stephen: How to defeat ISIS.

Pap and Farron Cousins: Texas is trying to redefine “personhood” to keep Blacks and Hispanics from voting

Jimmy Dore chats with John Boehner on life after Congress.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Chaos in the G.O.P.

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Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign season, I thought the G.O.P. primary was about as crazy as it could be. I mean, what can be crazier than a field that included Michele “HPV vaccine-retarded” Bachmann, Herman “9-9-9” Cain, Rick “Oops” Perry, Newt “Poor kids as school janitors” Gingrich, Rick “Ewwww” Santorum , and crazy ol’ Ron “Social Security is unconstitutional” Paul?

Boy…did I underestimate Republicans, and their God-given talents to indulge in The Crazy.

Trump in charge
I won’t rehash The Crazy to date—there’s been just too much. This week, though, The Crazy seems to have reached some kind of boiling point after Donald Trump proposed banning Muslims from entering the U.S. Since then, he has doubled down, and even had a spokesperson callously state, on national TV, “So what? They’re Muslim.” This arguably isn’t his craziest, his most racist or even his most outrageously unconstitutional proposal. But it combines elements of crazy, racist, and unconstitutional, and distills them down to a pseudo-policy proposal that is easy to understand. It’s done two things.

First, it has “legitimized” open expression of bigotry and racism for a big chunk of the G.O.P. Trump has “let down” the dog whistle and made it okay for many Republicans to unleash their inner-racist at full volume. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham admits that about 40% of the G.O.P. are racist. Trump’s liberation of closet racists in the G.O.P. has actually helped his poll numbers in some early primary states, and he maintains a sizable lead in the first national poll taken since the policy was announced.

Second, it has created a sense of panic among the G.O.P. establishment over a “nightmare scenario” of Trump or Cruz. Trump would, apparently, end the G.O.P. as we know it. So in the past 24 hours, there have been reports that the G.O.P. leadership is making contingency plans for a brokered convention. This has further fueled speculation that there is a secret plan to nominate Mitt Romney. Ben Carson is so outraged (and has so misunderstood the brokered convention plans), that he is threatening to leave the G.O.P. Crazy.


[I mean, things have gotten so freaking crazy that Sen. Ted Cruz has taken one last swallow, gotten off his knees and boldly (well…in a private meeting) questions Trump’s judgment. Trump, in turn, dares and then double-dares Cruz to take his best shot and orders him back to his knees.]

The Crazy has been working well for Trump (and Cruz and Carson to a lesser extent) in the primary. As a general election strategy, peddling fear and bigotry seems like a sure-losing strategy. It will take boatloads of money to help American’s forget this crazy primary before November. And even that may not be enough.

Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Bill Bryant Stakes Anti-Minimum Wage Claim, Because He’s a Terrible, Terrible Politician

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Bill Bryant

Terrible politician Bill Bryant opposes raising the minimum wage.

The high point of Dino Rossi’s 2008 gubernatorial redemption tour came in mid-September, in the days following the Republican National Convention. After months of trailing in the polls, Rossi had finally clawed ahead of Democratic incumbent Governor Christine Gregoire to claim a small but significant lead. Things were looking good for Republicans up and down the ticket. Rossi’s people were starting to sound downright cocky. Then the minimum wage debate happened.

At an Association of Washington Business sponsored debate in Blaine, Rossi came out against Washington’s minimum wage. And as Josh Feit first reported here on HA, that didn’t play too well with minimum wage workers:

Rossi took the opposite point of view. Touting his Washington Restaurant Association endorsement (the most adamant opponents of the minimum wage), he said:   “The minimum wage was not meant to be a family wage. It’s meant to be an entry level wage.”

The news pissed off [convenience store worker Garner] Palomata. “If he lowers it,” he said, “I don’t want to vote for him. I’d be cutting my head off. I don’t want to demote myself.”

The Gregoire campaign immediately seized the opportunity, running ads attacking Rossi for opposing the minimum wage. It worked. The Rossi bubble burst, and he quickly dropped in the polls. Rossi, who had managed a virtual tie just four years before, went on to lose by 6.5 points.

That’s a lesson you’d think Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bill Bryant might have learned before claiming the anti-minimum wage mantel:

Minimum wage is one economic issue where the two candidates diverge: Inslee supports a statewide minimum wage hike. Bryant does not, although he did back an $11.22 an hour wage at Sea-Tac airport.*

“Statewide level, the concern I have is that we can’t or we shouldn’t pin a minimum wage to the cost of living in King County,” Bryant said. “So I don’t think we can have a one-size-fits-all system.”

To be clear, Washington’s up-until-recently nation’s-highest minimum wage has proven both excellent policy and excellent politics, which is why raising the minimum wage remains exceptionally popular with voters. When workers have more money, businesses have more customers. And when businesses have more customers, they hire more workers. Our minimum wage is one of the reasons why our state economy is kicking ass.

So if the legislature fails to pass a minimum wage increase next year (and Bryant’s colleagues in the Republican-controlled senate won’t), a minimum wage initiative will be put on the state ballot and it will pass overwhelmingly. And you can be sure the Inslee campaign will make it clear to voters which candidate supports it and which doesn’t.

* Oh, and by the way, Bryant’s alleged support for an $11.22 an hour wage at Sea-Tac is bullshit. The port commission has obstructed the minimum wage struggle for years, first claiming that it had no authority to impose a minimum wage at the airport, and then suing that only it had the authority to do so after the SeaTac $15 initiative passed. Bryant only acceded to the $11.22 number after Alaska Airlines acceded to it first. Just sayin’.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottleIt’s only Tuesday morning but, man, what a crazy week we’ve had. On Monday, The Donald positioned himself even closer to the Birchers and neo-Nazis. Even Dick Cheney had to dissociate himself from Trump’s outrageous policy proposal. I’m sure there will be more about this throughout the day. Please join us tonight for conversation over drinks at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Things start up at about 8:00 pm.




Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities and Redmond chapters also meet. The Bremerton, Spokane, and Kent chapters meet on Thursday.

There are 186 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, three in Oregon and one in Idaho. Find—or start—a chapter near you.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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How to save the planet and money this holiday season.

Lee Camp: Labeling people.

Chris Hayes: The G.O.P.’s new War on Women™ to gut Roe v Wade.

Thom: The Good, the Bad & the Very, Very Inconditely Ugly!

White House: West Wing Week.

Larry Wilmore: Don’t mess with Tex books.

The 2016 Cavalcade of Crazy Conservative Clowns:

Trevor Noah: The fight against ISIS.

Congressional hits and misses of the week.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about eyes.

David Pakman: Bush & Cheney freed ISIS leader because he was “harmless”.

The glory days of the TSA.

Mental Floss: 37 facts about fruit.

Jimmy Dore: CNN to check facts & why that makes Jake Tapper cringe.

This Week in Gun Violence:

Quantum physics made easy.

Red State Update: Unboxing a giant American flag.

Friday political hot takes.

Sam Seder: Star GOP tweenage boy done with conservativism.

Pelosi slams GOP budget proposal

The G.O.P. is full of climate change deniers.

Thom: The Good, the Bad & the Very, Very Claudicantly Ugly!

David Hawkings’ Whiteboard: Omnibus:

Jimmy Dore: Iraq war 2.0 is BACK, baby!

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

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